Political Insider: Keeping Tabs on Jewish Republicans: Not a Nonpartisan Affair

The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) may not reflect the voting behavior of a majority of Jewish voters, but it has no problem raising big bucks - and using that money to run aggressive ads attacking the Democrats.

Now a group of young Jewish Democrats says it will set up a new blog to monitor the RJC's "inaccuracies and hypocrisies."

The "Republican Jewish Coalition Watch" will "catalog both accurate statements and misleading remarks" in upcoming RJC ads, and will "attempt to document these statements by referring to non-partisan neutral sources," leaders of the new group said in a statement.

They cite an example: the RJC ran aggressive ads attacking Sen. Joe Lieberman and linking him to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan when the lawmaker was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000, but they praised him in 2006, when Lieberman lost the Democratic primary to challenger Ned Lamont.

But the effort is anything but unpartisan and neutral; it reflects growing fears in Democratic circles that Sen. John McCain could grab the biggest share of Democratic votes since Ronald Reagan's 39 percent in 1980.

Democratic sources say the party will mount an aggressive effort to keep that from happening;  The Republican Jewish Coalition Watch, a project of the Young Democrats of America Jewish Caucus, is one front in that broad effort.

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